Salon.com > Ashley Craddock

McCain rattles his light saber

Sun, 06 Feb 2000 11:37:00 +0000

On the heels of his New Hampshire victory and just before the Gipper's 89th birthday, John McCain had a dilemma: Should he emulate Luke Skywalker or Ronald Reagan? Or could he be both?

At the California Republican Convention, where McCain gave the keynote address Saturday, the Arizona senator tried to have it both ways: He's the leader of a spunky popular insurgency that's gunning for the gold, and he's the rightful heir to Reagan's mantle.

At first, the two images seem irreconcilable: The golden-haired, scrappy underdog who took on the Death Star and the comfortable, sweater-clad, morning-in-America Gip, the man who took office at 69 amid pomp and circumstance. But the analogy works: Reagan -- the pre-presidential Reagan -- had been a scrappy upstart, too. The kid digging through the manure looking for the pony. And sweater and pomp aside, Reagan as president was a warrior, the guy who waged a war against not the Soviet Union, but the "Evil Empire." Luke Skywalker and Ronald Reagan both claimed to battle for the souls of their nations. And Reagan even started his own "Star Wars."

Jasper's stand

Thu, 18 Nov 1999 13:00:00 +0000

After almost two days of deliberation, a pinch-faced jury on Thursday
returned a verdict of capital murder -- and later a life sentence -- against defendant Shawn Allen Berry for the June 7, 1998, dragging death of James Byrd Jr. Some question whether Berry's trial has been a test of a community's stand against racism rather than an examination of an individual's guilt or innocence.

The verdict marked the end of a grueling series of three trials that has put the East Texas town of Jasper on the national map as a locus of racism and hate crimes. All three defendants -- Berry, Bill King and Russell Brewer -- have been found guilty of capital murder. King and Russell have been sentenced to die by lethal injection. The jury sentenced Berry to life in prison, which carries a minimum of 40 calendar years served before parole.

In cold blood?

Wed, 17 Nov 1999 09:00:00 +0000

Scarcely a week after it opened, the trial of the last defendant in the racially motivated dragging death of James Byrd Jr. was delivered to the jury for a verdict Wednesday.

The all-white jury retired to deliberate the fate of defendant Shawn Berry, who could face the death penalty if convicted.

In closing arguments, the prosecution, which has struggled to find a credible motive for the crime, positioned Berry as something worse than a racist. "There were three people involved ... that
night," said Assistant District Attorney Pat Hardy. "Of the three people involved, [Berry] was the worst of the bunch."

Convicted co-defendants Bill King and Russell Brewer may have had twisted, abhorrent beliefs, he continued, "but at least they believed in something. Shawn Berry
did it for nothing but the fun of it."

In his closing arguments, defense attorney Lum Hawthorn sought to assure the
jury that it was not responsible for removing the stain of the
infamous hate crime from Jasper's collective conscience.

The Jasper myth

Mon, 25 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

As Shawn Berry goes to trial Monday for his alleged role in the brutal 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., Jasper residents, both black and white, remain united behind a single myth.

The myth of Jasper is this: Byrd's murder notwithstanding, the town is racially harmonious. Blacks and whites coexist not just peacefully, but untainted by the prejudice the national media has charged Jasper's residents with. In fact, the races do more than coexist peacefully. Whites, instead of being the oppressors, are presided over by a black power elite, including a black mayor, R.C. Horn. Or as one old white man, a former high school teacher, put it, "I don't know what people are talking about when they say we're racist. We turned this town over to the niggers to run years ago."

Byrd was killed June 7, 1998, when three men, Lawrence Brewer, Bill King and Shawn Berry, chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him three miles down the road. Byrd was black; his three killers -- whose guilt was never really in doubt -- were white.